Women who have stressful jobs may become less attractive to the opposite sex

The old adage that women can’t ‘have it all’ may have more than an element of truth in it, according to scientists.

A new survey has revealed that high powered career women who have stressful jobs may struggle to find love.

In addition to long hours, which can make finding time for romance hard, the stress of a busy job causes an increase in the level of the hormone cortisol, which research suggests makes women less good-looking to men.

Men were asked to rate the attractiveness of women’s faces and those who had high levels of the stress hormone were rated lower.

The researchers also found that the women deemed to be more attractive carried an ‘ideal’ amount of fat – neither too much nor too little.

The research, conducted by the University of Turku, in Finland and published in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters, suggest that this effect might be because those who have high stress levels tend to be less healthy overall, and our faces reflect both how healthy someone is as well as their fertility.

Men are biologically more likely to be attracted to women who are both healthy and fertile, and thus can bare them children, even if this reasoning behind attractive is subconscious.

Cortisol helps reduce the immune system and increase metabolism under stressful conditions – meant to help the ‘flight or fight response’ but over production can have a negative effect on health and has been linked to heart disease.

However, the good news for ladies looking for love is that men are in much the same boat; their level of cortisol has been found to rise if they are around a beautiful women, making them less attractive to us!